Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/21

 AKBAR'S ACCESSION TO THE THRONE 3 The storming of Chitor in 1567 was a conspicuous land- mark in history, but it was not till 1572 that the Raj- puts were finally brought into the empire. Bengal was not conquered before 1575, and Gujarat, though occu- pied in 1572, had to be retaken in 1584 and gave trouble for several years more. Kabul, under Akbar's brother Hakim, was almost a separate kingdom and frequently aggressive. Among the outlying provinces, Orissa be- came part of the empire as late as 1590, Kashmir in 1587, Sind in 1592, Kandahar in 1594, and only a small portion of the Deccan was annexed in Akbar's life. The reign was thus a perpetual series of efforts toward the expansion of a territory originally small. So doubtful indeed seemed Akbar's prospects of Indian sovereignty at the moment when his father's unex- pected death placed him in command, that in the first council of war the generals strongly urged an imme- diate retreat upon Kabul, and their advice was over- ruled only by the firm decision of the regent Bairam, an old Turkman officer who had followed Babar and Humayun, and realized better than the others the divided and leaderless state of the enemy. Matters were certainly in an alarming position. Sikandar of Delhi had been driven to the mountains, where he held Mankot against all attacks, but a far more formidable army was marching to take vengeance. Himu, the general of the Bengal kingdom, a Hindu who had rap- idly advanced from a mere shopkeeper to practically supreme power, entered Agra unopposed, defeated Tardi Beg at Delhi, occupied the capital, assumed the